<i>Matrona</i> and Whore: The Clothing of Women in Roman Antiquity

Olson, Kelly

doi:10.2752/136270402779615352

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Butler 1990, 36-43. 63 Stone 1994Olson 2002Olson , 389-92, 2008bEdmondson 2008, 38-9. See also Barthes 1983, 3-10.…”

Section: Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Vestal Habit

Gallia

2014

Classical Philology

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In her epochal study of the Vestal virgins, Mary Beard called attention to the ambiguous position of these priestesses in relation to the normative categories of gender in Roman society. 1 Drawing on the insights of structural anthropology, she argued that this ambiguity was central to the Vestals' sacredness. Essentially, her interpretation rests on the proposition that, by combining features relating to the status of unmarried daughters (virgines) with those of married women (matronae), the priestesses became in themselves vessels for the symbolic mediation between culturally opposed categories that Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, and others have identified as a central function of myth and ritual. 2 Although the underlying observation about the peculiarity of the Vestals' "sexual status" must ultimately be allowed to stand, more recent work on the inherent instability of categories of sex and gender suggests that we ought to revisit the problem of the priestesses' ambiguity, paying closer attention to the socially contingent nature of its production. 3 In this article, I will confine my discussion to an aspect of gender construction that Beard regarded as essential to establishing the matronal piece of the Vestals' supposed interstitiality:

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“…Butler 1990, 36-43. 63 Stone 1994Olson 2002Olson , 389-92, 2008bEdmondson 2008, 38-9. See also Barthes 1983, 3-10.…”

Section: Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…7.31.2. Cato: Livy 34.1-4;Olson 2002 Olson , 398-400, 2008b. Note that Festus (454L) describes the seni crines as not just chaste, but vetustissimus.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%